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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

LG G2, Moto X, and the Little Things That Count

What really impressed me at yesterday's rollout of the LG G2 and last week's introduction of the Motorola Moto X was that beyond the obvious technical features, both LG and Motorola have clearly been spending a lot of time thinking about how we use smartphones today. As a result, the hardware and software of both new flagship Android-based smartphones focus on simplifying the little things we do all the time.

Take the Moto X. On paper, the specs are fairly mid-range. The 4.7-inch, 720p AMOLED display would have been high-end a year ago, but now it falls behind the 5-inch 1080p screens we've seen from others. But it does allow Motorola to offer a smaller phone, and many people like that. The 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro was similarly high-end a year ago, but has since been supplanted by more powerful processors, even within the Snapdragon family. Motorola chose to supplement this in its "X8" chipset, which adds two digital signal processors (DSPs), one for "contextual processing" to handle sensors, and another for voice processing.

And rather than just offering the standard selection of two or three colors, Motorola introduced its Moto Maker program in which you can customize the colors of the front and back covers, choose an accent cover for buttons, and add a unique signature. It sounds like the difference between ordering a car and just driving one off from the showroom. For now, this will only be available on the AT&T version, but it's certainly different.

Perhaps more impressive are the software features, some of which take advantage of that new chipset.

To take a picture, you don't have to unlock the phone or even click a special button. Instead, you can just twist your phone in a particular way and the camera app opens. The rest of the phone remains locked so there isn't a security issue. When you pick up the phone, it shows a minimal display with the time and some basic information, while not turning on the full processor.

It's also constantly listening, so you can say "OK Google Now" and the phone will immediately start processing your request, assuming, of course, it has Internet connectivity and can understand what you are asking for. Again, this is easier than unlocking the phone and looking for the app.

The LG G2 has much better specs. It has a 5.2-inch IPS LCD display with a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution and a dual-controller touch panel that allows the display to be thinner, with a bezel that is only 0.1 inches (2.65mm) wide. It says the display uses lower power graphics RAM and has more subpixels than OLED displays, which typically use some form of Samsung's PenTile technology for subpixels, and thus it looks better close up. A 5.2-inch display with a small bezel gives it a width of 2.7 inches, which LG says is the largest a typical person can navigate with one hand.

The G2 has a battery that fits around the available space behind the screen in a new fashion, allowing more capacity in the same space. In both of these areas, it looks like LG is taking advantage of being part of a family of companies including one that makes displays (LG Display) and one that makes batteries (LG Chem), much the way that Samsung has used its expertise in OLED displays, memory, and in some cases processors to define its phones. In addition, this will be the first worldwide phone to use the latest Qualcomm processor, the 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800, which supports LTE-Advanced with channel aggregation. I'm sure that's going to be in many other devices but for now, LG gets bragging rights.

What really stood out was the emphasis on usability features. LG uses the slogan "Learning from you" and LG Mobile CEO Jong-seok Park stood up to say, "technology without empathy can no longer be considered innovation."

The biggest change in the design is that all of the buttons have been removed from the side of the phone, replaced by a single rear key. This button sits about where you would normally place your index finger on the back of the phone and serves as a power button, volume control, and camera trigger. LG says removing the button from the side makes you less likely to drop the phone. It's a little change, but certainly interesting.

LG has also focused on the AV features. The camera is a typical 13-megapixel model but adds optical image stabilization (OIS). Other phones have OIS, but most have smaller megapixel counts. I'll have to try this out to see if it really helps. The G2 also supports 24-bit, 192KHz hi-fi audio, with LG talking about how much better it sounds than the typical 16bit, 44.1KHz CD-quality audio. This only works with WAV and FLAC files, so chances are most downloaded music won't sound any better, but if you truly care about audio, this should make a difference. The included ring tones certainly sound nice, not that it matters much to me.

Still, it's the little things in the user interface that really stand out. If the phone rings, for instance, you can just pick it up and place it to your ear and it will automatically answer. You can knock twice on the phone's screen to turn it on. When you plug a headset in, a list of the applications you're mostly like to want pops up. While you are texting, you can automatically pull up a calendar or map to quickly check or add something. It also has a "guest mode" that you can access by just using a different gesture on the unlock screen, so your kids or friends can only get to the applications you want them to.

Some of the other features look nice, but may not be quite so useful. LG has a QuickMemo feature that lets you easily add a note to a screen shot. That's fun, but I haven't used a similar feature on phones from LG and others much. A new feature called "slide aside" lets you quickly move between three applications by sliding your fingers. It sounds interesting, but with the G2 also having the standard Android multitasking features and also LG's Qslide tools that pop up an accessory or two on top of your running apps, I wonder if it's getting a bit confusing.

As with most of these things, I won't really know until I can spend some more time with the phone. What I can say is that it's good to have the phone makers thinking about what we actually do with the devices all day long instead of just talking specs. I'm looking forward to actually living with both the Moto X and the LG G2 to see whether they really do make things easier in daily use.

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